The timing was especially poignant because the meeting was the last for Henry Muñoz III as chairman, who was sent off in a pomp that paraded out an array of high-profile well-wishers.

In particular, ardent streetcar opponent Jeff Judson announced a petition drive to amend the city charter, which would prohibit the use of city-owned rights-of-way for light rail and streetcar.

“These forms will be all over San Antonio, and they’ll be appearing on websites until we get the 20,000 signatures required to put a charter amendment on the November ballot,” Judson said at the news conference. Click here to download a copy of the petition.

Judson took it a step further asking VIA and other public entities to not enter into any long-term, streetcar-related contracts that could not be undone without an expensive penalty.

“While these actions are underway, we call on all of our elected and appointed officials not to enter into any contracts to build the streetcar, especially not contracts that have irrevocable agreements in them that make it onerous and expensive to undo these contracts,” Judson said.

Estimated to cost $280 million for a 5.9-mile system, the streetcar would circulate around downtown and connect the area near the Pearl to Southtown. The money is being cobbled together from a variety of public sources, include $32 million from the city of San Antonio.

On his way out of the meeting, Muñoz defended the project.

“You hold a referendum when you ask people for new taxes,” he said. “We are building our multimodal system without imposing new taxes. I believe that people should feel good about the fact that we are building a multimodal system, which includes streetcar, with only half a cent of sales tax.

“Where were they for three years when we were talking to people, when we had public meeting after public meeting after public meeting?,” Muñoz said, “And now that we’re in the middle of building it, a small group of extremists want to say ‘no’.”

Within months of deciding to build the project, opponents of the streetcar asserted Bexar County could not spend its share of a Advanced Transportation District sales tax revenues on the project because voters were promised that money would never go to light rail.

So began the long battle over whether streetcar constituted light rail, a debate that has never been truly resolved.

Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff maintained the two modes were different.

However, rather than face a potential legal fight, the county switched out its share of the money with money from the Texas Department of Transportation.

The streetcar debate even reached Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, whose office last year declined to approve VIA’s request to issue debt for the Westside center, and the Robert Thompson Transit Center next to the Alamodome, where the streetcar will travel. His office tried to prove that, because VIA was going to use ATD tax dollars, that was equivalent to using the money on streetcar.

ATD money can’t go to light rail. Abbott’s office drew no difference between streetcar and light rail, and thus said the money could not be used on the transit centers.

VIA sued and won in Travis County District Court last month.

George Alejos, who filed an appeal, said at the news conference that the judge ordered that he post a $3 million bond for the litigation to proceed, effectively ending it.